Witchery on the silver screen

New additions to the library’s Witchcraft Collection will make their public debut in the Straight next week: historical witchcraft movie posters from 1937 to 2013.

In conjunction with Cornell Cinema, the library’s Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections will display a selection of the newly acquired posters in Willard Straight Hall, before screenings of “War Witch” and “I Married a Witch” Thursday, Sept. 26.

“Witchcraft is not only a minor or marginal topic for dodgy B-movies, cheap comedies, or erotic horror, after all – even though these subgenres are well-represented,” says curator Laurent Ferri.

The library’s Witchcraft Collection has expanded in recent years. It contains many 16th-, 17th- amd -18th-century witchcraft trial records; all the major treatises of demonology since the “Malleus Maleficarum” (1487); pamphlets related to witchcraft and witch-hunts; materials on Wicca and neo-witchcraft in the United States; and artists' books inspired by magic and the supernatural.

In the future, it may contain more items from non-Western traditions, such as Haitian voodoo, Mexican Santería or witch-doctors and “war witches” in Africa.